The story of this book starts in 1993, when extracts from Elizabeth Bowen's works were included in "A North Cork Anthology", with the qualification that, though her family had property connections in the areas, she could not be regarded as a North Cork, or even an Irish writer. This caused outrage in the Dublin media and some vicious attacks on Jack Lane and Brendan Clifford, the compilers of the Anthology. There was even doubt cast on the fact that Ms. Bowen spied against Ireland in the Second World War.

The upshot of that controversy was that the Aubane Historical Society traced several of Ms. Bowen's secret reports, which are published here in full for the first time. For those who would see Ms. Bowen's spying as needing no defence, on the supposition that the Allied war on Germany was absolutely justified, and that Neutrals had no case, this book provides an extensive survey of international affairs in the decades before the War, including de Valera's role in the League of Nations. There are also sections on Irish and European Fascism.

The book is rounded out by reproducing the polemic about Bowen which took place between the Aubane Historical Society and luminaries of the "Irish Times" and the "Sunday Business Post". The controversy about how to describe Ms. Bowen goes to the heart of what Ireland and Irish culture is, and this book is as good a starting point as any for those who seek the middle path between the Scylla of bigoted nationalism and the Charybdis of West British globalism.

The second edition provides a further review of aspects of World War 2—the British betrayal of Poland, the American provocation of Japan, the British insistence on delaying the Second Front, and the Nuremberg Trials—in response to an indictment of Irish neutrality by Professor B. Girvin and Dr. G. Roberts. 152 pp.

This third edition, written ten years after the original, includes more espionage reports subsequently discovered, and also the importance of the reports to Churchill and his cabinet.